Charles Correa was a rare person, special and unusual. I was privileged to have known him and his wife, Monika, a textile master, from the time I was a young teenager, impressionable and curious, eager to reach out to men and women whose creativity, ideas and imaginative alternatives excited me to extend myself beyond the rigidity of going with the herd and to break away from doing what was expected of young people graduating from school. Charles was one such 'hero' in my life. He remained an extraordinary individual, intellectually alive and sharp, right up until the last conversation that I had with him a couple of months ago, on the telephone, where we were discussing the restoration of one of his buildings in Jaipur.
Over the years, I would listen to long and leisurely conversations that he had with my parents that ranged from politics to town planning and design, and everything in between, because Charles believed, like many of his time, that politics was intrinsic to life and living and that good, egalitarian governance could introduce modernity within a tried and tested traditional frame. That a young, democratic India could well pattern an indigenous blueprint for growth in a changing world that could set the trend for the large number of developing countries struggling for their freedoms and liberal spaces. That human habitats and the surrounding environment needed to be oases of comfort where identities were respected, allowing different people and communities to feel confident and proud in their domains. The fundamentals of a design for living agitated his mind as he looked for answers and solutions for correcting all that was wrong with alien impositions that had created discomfort and unease in living patterns, often in conflict with climate and geography.
Charles was a true liberal mind, a public intellectual who always spoke out, loud and clear. He abhorred any intrusion into civil liberties and the freedom of expression. His writings, his architecture, his interventions in city planning and more, supported by his firm and unwavering political positions, made him stand apart among his peers. His architectural trajectory was diverse. Decades ago he designed one of the earliest seaside resorts for the India Tourism Development Corporation, on the beaches of Kovalam. With the rooms set into a hillock, the hotel rose up the slope into the sky, as it were. The design was unusual and made a dramatic statement at the time. It set a new standard. It broke convention. Then, years later, piercing through the laid-back, low skyline of Lutyens's capital city he designed a red sandstone Life Insurance Corporation building that juxtaposed colonial Delhi with modernity and the future. Many of us were at the time critical of that intrusion. Gradually we began to accept its overarching, dominant place along our city skyline.
Decades later, he designed New Delhi's most iconic contemporary low-rise building, a piece of three dimensional art much like 'installation architecture', virtually one of its kind, that sits grandly, set back from the edge of the road on Kasturba Gandhi Marg. Installation art was an adolescent form on the Indian art scene at the time when Charles Correa bequeathed to Delhi yet another voice and form that represented an idiom of the future.
His other obsession was the horrific, careless and thoughtless degradation of Bombay, now Mumbai. Having seen the rapid dilution of civic dignity, his dream of a 'Navi Mumbai' began to come alive, first on the drawing board and then, in its tangible form, in brick and mortar. The haphazard, unplanned growth of India's towns and cities bothered his mind and person. Conservation of habitats was important in his scheme and alternate ideas for the expansion of urban areas with sensitivity was prime in his trying to make correctives in city manuals, proposals and projects for development. While designing and building individual structures for his diverse clients, he provoked, argued and debated, reflected on and absorbed from his wide experience and intellectual exploration, influencing many from all the generations that came within his orbit and under his spell as he elaborated ideas and engaged with endless initiatives.
Jawahar Kala Kendra, JKK, in Jaipur, was conceived as a centre for the arts. It was a prestigious project commissioned by the government of the state. Here again, Charles Correa created the unexpected. Because of the fertile continuity of skill and tradition, alive and robust in the minds, hands and souls of artisans and artistes, this set of buildings uses and showcases elements, motifs and symbols that manifest the inherent beliefs and philosophies of our ancient sciences and also influences from our classical treatises. He brought traditional painters into his experiment to embellish ceilings and walls with legacy statements from a familiar living tradition. Very few architects would have the guts to break out of the standard established confines and attempt to fuse modernity with tradition and create an energetic, contemporary space.
With the passing of Charles Correa, India and the world have lost a great dreamer, a vibrant thinker, a creative intellectual who used his 'architecture' to express and share the ideas that jostled for space in his mind. Equally, he was an extraordinary friend who never let go of unconditional friendship for want of time in a schedule that was hectic, often unrelenting. I shall miss him hugely.
